"The National Congress of American Indians voted June 23 to approve a resolution calling for immediate passage of the Cobell v. Salazar settlement by Congress.

NCAI’s resolution did not call for supporting a controversial amendment to the settlement offered by Sen. John Barasso, R-Wyo., that would cap attorneys’ fees at $50 million rather than up to $100 million as the settlement proposes.

“I was happy to see that NCAI threw out the Barasso amendment,” said Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit.

The settlement calls for $1.4 billion to class members for redress of trust mismanagement and accounting claims and $2 billion to purchase and consolidate fractionated Indian land. The settlement also would set aside $60 million for a Native American scholarship fund.

The House voted to approve the deal just before Memorial Day, and the Senate is continuing to consider H.R. 4213, the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, which includes the Cobell settlement.

The resolution was approved during NCAI’s Mid-Year Conference in Rapid City, S.D., also called for tribal participation in the $2 billion land consolidation program and for “fairness in attorney fees and incentive payments to ensure that they do not unduly diminish the restitution to individual account holders.”

“The Cobell settlement is the first step in resolving longstanding trust mismanagement claims and moving forward on substantive reforms to the future of the trust land system,” the NCAI resolution reads."